Queensland's Agriculture Department will consider options to alleviate the impacts on Spanish mackerel commercial entitlement holders impacted by the announcement that commercial quotas are set to be slashed by 80 per cent.
The statement was made this week by Agriculture Minister Mark Furner, in the wake of accusations that fishermen had been blindsided by the state government's decision to slash commercial quotas from 570 tonnes to 165 tonnes a year.
Mr Furner said the government understood it was a challenging time for commercial fishers who rely solely on Spanish mackerel but reiterated that the reduction was necessary to rebuild the species and the jobs that depend on it, quoting scientific data that stocks had fallen to 17 per cent.
Among those impacted is Cairns licence holder Richard Gilmore, a member of the DAF Spanish mackerel working group representing the commercial fishing industry, who said his input had been futile.
"Where we are today is where they said we'd be 12 months ago," he said.
An owner-operator for the past seven years, holding two primary fishing licences, both multi-endorsed, Mr Gilmore said when he bought in he based his decision on stock assessments issued at the time.
"We did our due diligence, we were of the understanding we had the best management practices in the world," he said.
"Spanish mackerel has been under a quota management system since 2004, there's a cap on the catch, a cap on the number of licences.
"Nothing's changed with the industry, and we've noticed no change with the catch.
"I was out on the weekend, it was incredible how many mackerel were around - it's hard to believe there's as little fish as they tell us."
Spanish mackerel researcher Andrew Tobin told the North Queensland Register the spawning aggregation area off Townsville, which once provided 80pc of the total catch, was now providing 30pc.
"The 20 to 30 boats operating off Townsville in the 1930s got more fish then than the whole east coast is getting now," he said.
Licences 'worth nothing'
Mr Gilmore said his two licences, which he had $40,000 invested in, were now worth nothing.
He said Spanish mackerel fishing was a way of increasing the profitability of his business and without it, his business would struggle and it would be tempting to fish other species harder to make up for the loss.
"Those predominantly in the Spanish mackerel business will have to diversify and that's not easy to do - boats are set up specially," he said. "It beggars belief that the government is offering no compensation whatsoever to the 30 or so operators."
He feared that the saddletail snapper, or nannygai, which is his main target species, would be next in the Queensland Fisheries firing line.
Hill MP Shane Knuth has called on the state government to admit responsibility for "departmental mismanagement of the fishery".
"I am on record asking the Minister to explain how a fishery that was assessed as healthy in 2018 by his own department, after 14 years since quotas were introduced, can suddenly be deemed unhealthy, three years after the stock assessment model was changed," he said.
He also asked why the departmental assessment model was changed after the fishery was assessed as healthy with a 60 per cent biomass in DAF's 2018 Stock Assessment of Australian East Coast Spanish Mackerel, Predications of stock Status and Reference Points report.
"Commercial Spanish mackerel harvests, since 2004, have always been well under the allowable annual catch limit set by Fisheries, so any way you look at this either the fishery has been mismanaged since 2004 or the assessment model now being used is severely flawed," he said.
"If we were in a court of law, there could be no reasonable doubt that Fisheries are responsible for this debacle and compensation would be awarded to those affected.
"I call on the Minister to stop dodging the questions being asked by the industry, admit his department got this wrong and immediately compensate those affected by this decision."
Mr Furner said taking no action had not been an option for the government.
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